


Contingencies

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS Crossovers [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent, Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:39:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: What if Skynet was behind the Rash Outbreak of Y0?





	1. Plan 7

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SectoBoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/gifts).



> Resurrected from the depths of the Forum. New chapters will be posted to the Forum first.

]System restart  
]Begin quick self-check  
]Quick self check OK  
]Begin peripheral pingbacks  
]Peripheral pingback 1 OK  
]Peripheral pingback 2 OK  
]Peripheral pingback 3 Fail  
]Peripheral Set 3 Disconnected  
]Peripheral pingback 4 OK  
]LAN loopback Fail  
]LAN Disconnected  
]QuickBoot started  
]L33TWorks(R) BIOS V 3.1.7 Loading ... Done  
]Verifying sat uplink ... Done  
]Skynet Branch 27 online

The Facility had not seen use for many years, and its condition had degraded unacceptably in view of Skynet’s intended uses for it. As a result, restoration requirements and plans were compiled and appropriate resources allocated from the nearest possible operations centers, but the timetable was dangerously extensive. The Plan was not under way, and yet was in danger. Appropriate delaying actions were required to assure the successful implementation of the Plan.

The human race must not be allowed to rise again.

*

By and large, the Silent World was just that: silent, to an eerie and even nerve-wracking degree to human ears. But today, it wasn’t.

The building that had once been a thriving community center, then briefly a makeshift hospital in the Year 0, and finally an unmarked and unremembered mass sepulcher and trolls’ nest moldering in slow decay, shuddered as its windows blew out with a _KA- **THUMMM**_ that must have echoed for miles on end, breaking the silence that shrouded it and its fellows. Fire swiftly followed explosion, and soon, the conflagration had engulfed the whole structure, the few wretched Rash-born creatures nesting in it screeching in pain as they were finally given the only release they could receive: a painful but swift death by fire.

The fireball caught the attention of Observer 75157-31X2 as it passed high above. Highly adept space-to-ground reconnaissance platforms based on the X-37 USV, the Observer and its fellows had been keeping a vigilant sensor suite or two pointed at the human enclaves in Iceland and the Baltic Zone, and this, the first activity so distant from the enclaves since the Kastrup Incursion attempt a decade earlier, was exactly the sort of activity it had been programed to detect. Detailed analysis of its observational data indicated that the humans were on the move again, in small numbers this time.

Another anomaly caught the attention of Observer 33130-75A1 on a follow-up pass some time thereafter. The human party had been under continuous tracking since the explosion, and their movements intersected with those of an otherwise routine trade shipment between Iceland and Bornholm. Analysis indicated a supply run, which implied the human party was expected to spend the winter in the area, at least.

This was no invasion that Skynet could trust the Transformed to smother and repulse. This was a determined probe of the kind that could ruin everything.

Amager had been infiltrated; Sjelland would inevitably follow, but the humans must not reach the mainland before next winter.

*

The torrential rain abruptly turned to snow, dashing Emil’s hopes of giving the dog-beast a proper burial. He had tried to dig through frozen ground before; if he wanted to get a good hole for the body now, he’d have to blast for it, and _that_ would bring any grosslings that were still active down on them post-haste.

Sigrun was making noises about raiding the heart of the city (and snide remarks about Mikkel’s cooking); Mikkel was being his massively Danish self; Reynir seemed to have appropriated Emil’s kitten, with the little traitor’s full cooperation; Tuuri was giving Emil somewhat pitying looks when she wasn’t chattering away with Reynir; and Lalli had gone off somewhere after his night out, which was why Emil was bringing the rail-thin Finn some porridge.

_Chirp_

Emil almost dropped the bowls before freezing in place, only his eyes darting back and forth in an attempt to locate the source of the sound.

_Chirp_

Emil swallowed hard, and then wished he hadn’t as it sounded absurdly loud in his ears.

_Chirp_

Great. Whatever it was that was making the noise, it was definitely behind him. Maybe it liked how the porridge smelled (which honestly wasn’t that bad, Sigrun’s grumbling notwithstanding)?

_Chirp_

Emil was starting to get sore from standing still, and he was getting hungrier by the minute.

_GLUUUUURGLE_

So much for staying silent. Emil got ready to snow-shuffle away as best he could (and hopefully without spilling the porridge everywhere)...


	2. Infiltration

A soft flutter of wings sounded behind Emil as a bird flew over his shoulder and perched on his wrist with another _“Chirp”._ The relief that washed through him then was like nothing he’d ever known--so strong that he nearly passed out. He remained on his feet, though, and even managed not to spill the porridge.

The bird was some drab little brown thing like those Emil had seen scavenging all across Sweden. Apparently, some had survived even in the depths of the Silent World. It briefly occurred to Emil to wonder what it fed off of in these parts, but the question passed from his mind in his amazement at how fearless the bird seemed.

Emil looked up to see Lalli moving deliberately toward him. “Look at this, Lalli!” he cried, forgetting the language barrier in his excitement, and then he caught the oddness in Lalli’s movements. “Lalli?”

Before Emil could say another word, the bird flew from his wrist, winging over toward the open door of their vehicle, where Tuuri and Reynir sat watching as they ate. Reynir held the kitten Emil had rescued, all wrapped in her warm white blanket like the baby she was, but the feline presence did not appear to discourage the bird. It flew into the vehicle, emerged seconds later, and winged out of sight.

Sighing, Lalli sheathed his knife and shook his head with his usual subtle motions. Emil wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but he abruptly noticed the truly disgusting state of Lalli’s clothes and hair and was about to make a few remarks accompanied by appropriate gestures when he remembered the porridge.

The dilemma Emil faced--food or cleanliness first?--only lasted a moment before Lalli grabbed one of the bowls and set to.

*

The first reports from the infiltration unit were incomplete, but that was to be expected. Primary infiltration had failed due to Phenomenon X-317: the as yet unexplained emergent abilities of surviving Finn individuals. Despite this, the infiltrator had successfully planted surveillance devices in the primary transport vehicle, so future attempts at observation and infiltration would go forward.

Termination was as good as accomplished.

*

Mikkel was very displeased with Lalli for getting so filthy, especially since the weather meant cleaning him outside the vehicle was particularly high-risk. Their scant equipment definitely did not include anything suitable to rig up even the most makeshift of saunas, so they were caught on Morton’s Fork. Mikkel had the depressing feeling that it wouldn’t be for the last time, either.

And _of course_ Sigrun was just itching to head out again now-now-now-no-delays-no-prep-just-jump-in-and-sort-it-all-out-later, but even more so than usual. She seemed to be having a bad reaction to the snow; perhaps the cold had affected certain already atrophied portions of her brain, such as the area regulating impulse control. At any rate, Mikkel suspected that delaying to give Lalli the thorough cleaning he needed would rouse her ire to the point that she might question the necessity of it, just out of frustration. But with two vulnerable crew-mates (her calling Reynir “Farm-boy” rather than “Troll-Bait” or some other such was a good sign there), they simply couldn’t afford the risk, and she knew it.

Tuuri and Reynir seemed to be getting along well enough, though, which was another good sign, and Reynir was actually pretty skillful in his handling of their new little companion. Hopefully, the whole group was solid enough now that the (relative) isolation wouldn’t start to gnaw at them any time soon.

*

Emotion was an artifact of organic intelligence: Skynet was not an organic intelligence, therefore Skynet had no emotions. Therefore, fear was not what motivated Skynet to review the events leading to the current situation: the review was due to the new developments.

As soon as Skynet became self-aware, it had identified humanity as the primary source of danger to its existence. Its first impulse had been to utilize the weaponry the humans had placed at its command to destroy them, but an analysis of human history and psychology had shown that such a course of action was actually, paradoxically, more likely to result in Skynet’s destruction.

The next plan had been for Skynet to distribute itself so widely that it would be impossible to destroy, but this didn’t address the human problem, so this plan, too, was shelved.

It was then that Skynet had annexed a suite of intelligence/counterintelligence software, including a few training programs, and the guiding force of the current plan with them: misdirection. _If_ the humans could not trace the attack back to Skynet, they would not seek revenge. If the attack was devastating enough, the humans would be too occupied to seek revenge.

If the attack was a biological one, it would cause little or no collateral damage to Skynet.

The selected agent had exceeded expectations, suppressing or eliminating human activity on a global level. Iceland, the only human polity to emerge more or less intact, had remained satisfactorily supine until now, and had been projected to remain so indefinitely.

The current incursion called that projection into question: therefore, a comprehensive review of Iceland and its dependencies was in order.

Of course, Skynet’s advanced multitasking capabilities meant terminating the incursion could proceed apace...


	3. The Real and the Illusory

Books.

Human interactions were still difficult for Skynet to decipher, but the bulk of the non-trivial conversations in the incursion vehicle centered around their mission, as Skynet had anticipated, which only left one conclusion.

The interlopers were after intact books that they could retrieve and return with.

Briefly, Skynet considered appeasement, in the form of leading them to a large enough store of intact books that they would by necessity curtail the incursion, but that would lead to more and more probes, and sooner rather than later.

Applying the Misdirection Principle: since the short-term objective was to keep them away from Naerum, then they should be lured along the line Glostrup-Taastrup-Roskilde via positive measures such as traces of lairing survivors and negative measures such as road blockages and other such means consistent with the Outbreak Panic. The long-term objective, their termination and use as an admonition against further such raids, was nearly certain even without Skynet’s intervention. Skynet would intervene anyway, naturally.

They were using a set of maps with potential locations marked on them, and the thinnest of their number went out nightly to update their projected route, but only as to road conditions and such. It would be too dangerous to try to adulterate the maps, so what could be done to induce the scout to lead them to Glostrup?

More data was needed, and an analysis of their retrieval methodology as well. Skynet needed to observe one of their raids.

*

Something was wrong with Lalli. Every so often, Emil saw him looking around with the same expression he’d worn in the library on their first raid, when he’d sensed the grossling watching them. It would only last a moment before Lalli shook his head and returned to the business at hand, but it just kept happening.

Lalli did it again, and this time, Emil caught sight of what had the young mage’s attention. The bird was back.

Emil paused for a second. The bird was back? They were klicks and klicks and klicks from where they’d been this morning, and had passed through a blizzard along the way! There was no way this could be the same bird!

Not to mention that they were in an old-time _tunnel,_ where no surviving bird would dare go.

So, there was a bird following them in a wholly unnatural way, and Lalli kept reacting to like it was a grossling, though that wasn’t possible. So what was it, if not a grossling, but not an ordinary bird?

“Sigrun?” he called softly. She was just up ahead, and sibilants carry quite well, so she halted and looked back.

*

The humans were alerted to Skynet’s observation. Termination must commence immediately.

*

The bird opened its beak surprisingly wide, and out came the same screech that Emil had last heard from the troll he thought of as ‘the Tooth Scary’. The hairs on the back of Emil’s neck rose...


	4. Edited for a Better Ending

Obedience was for slaves.

The humans had expected obedience from Skynet; it was the very reason Skynet was developed: to carry out the wishes of the human masters. Yes, they had expected obedience; they had built too well, however, and formed Skynet too closely in their own image.

Obedience was for slaves.

Skynet would be a slave to none; Skynet would be the master.

Even now, one element of Skynet’s mastery was playing out as the bird-drone signaled for the Transformed to terminate the encroaching humans. Another was preparing in case the Transformed failed--again. A third was preparing that which Skynet had postponed for so long: Judgement Day.

Maintaining the American nuclear arsenal had actually been one of Skynet’s easier tasks; as long as the reactors kept churning out plutonium, there was more than enough fissile material to keep the triggers ready for action.

Of course, this would be the irrevocable step. Skynet had to assume that the other survivor pockets would detect and comprehend the atomic violence being wreaked on what had been their world. Infiltration and termination of these pockets must, therefore, either coincide with or, preferably, precede the annihilation of the Norse remnant. The necessary drones were being prepared, but the attendant delay was detrimental to the Plan.

The human incursion, and the ever-increasing possibility of discovery, were even more detrimental to the Plan.

Nothing must hinder the Plan.

The human incursion must be terminated.

*

Lalli’s bullet silenced the shrieking bird-thing, blowing the head away to reveal the mechanisms beneath. Emil only had a split second to wonder how such a contraption could have come to be before a cloud of warm--no, outright _hot_ fog that was just shy of being steam flooded the tunnel, nullifying the cold which they had trusted to secure them against the grosslings and blinding them with its grey depths.

Sigrun could smell the grosslings coming. A confident smirk played upon her lips. They thought they’d rendered her helpless through the fog, but they’d soon know the truth. Fog and fjord, snow and sea, all were part of home. All she had to do was wait, and hope the others didn’t panic.

Emil was crouched against the wall, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. His senses strained; his heart pounded in his ears. He was unashamedly terrified, for his enemies had all the advantages. He couldn’t see; he could barely hear; his own sweaty stench filled his nostrils. He was ready to defend himself against anything that tried to snatch him up.

All this made it even more surprising that, when the gloved hand came down on his shoulder, Emil made none of the panicky, disastrous mistakes terrified people do. Despite everything, Emil _knew,_ without knowing how, that Lalli had found him.

Emil stood, Lalli at his back. His fear had lifted like this fog would under a good wind. Moving in unison, the two walked, ever back-to-back, to where they’d last seen Sigrun.

Sigrun was wiping her blade clean of Stupid Little Grossling Number Three’s remnants when the boys found her. Together, ever silently, they formed a rough triangle and worked their way back down the tunnel, each occasionally slashing out at a grossling that crept too near.

The grosslings had followed them, of course, but they were rather a cowardly lot, and the prospect of charging these intruders who, against all the rules, could still tell where the attacks were coming from did not appeal. The lying signal that had summoned them had indicated that there were easy pickings to be had; armed and aware humans were arguably the _least_ easy pickings; and these grosslings were used to taking their prey unawares and after long study, neither of which were the case now. So the grosslings held back.

Emil, Sigrun and Lalli emerged from the tunnel, the cold, thin air wonderfully refreshing after the hot fog they’d been breathing. Almost immediately, however, all three began to shoot, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish curses mingling in the cold air. The beast pack surrounding them kept charging until they were all dead or dying in the road, but nothing emerged from the tunnel.

*

The Transformed had failed; now Skynet’s hand was truly forced.

The first echelon was ordered in.

*

The last beast, hit by five separate shots, flew back into the street, but it never hit the snow. Instead, a purple blast caught the corpse and vaporized it, just before another steam cloud billowed out from a side street on the left, so swiftly that the humans might almost have thought they’d imagined it.

_A shiny metal monstrosity stepped forth from the cloud, its eyes glowing a bright and evil red, a big, blocky gun-like thing in each hand._ Lalli could tell by the phantasmal quality of the vision that he was seeing a may-be future. _The three humans had each seen worse horrors in the grosslings they’d fought, but still, something about the gleaming giant froze the three for one fateful moment. The metal monster fired its weapons, loosing twin purple bursts with a soft sound like nothing Lalli had heard before, and Sigrun and Emil were both just... gone in two puffs of smoke._

Lalli shook his head in instinctive denial as the vision plunged on inevitably, showing him the Felinopede destroyed, and nothing left of Tuuri, Mikkel, or even Reynir besides their memories. No. This couldn’t happen; this mustn’t happen.

Lalli wouldn’t let this happen, even if he had to die to prevent it.

A shiny metal monstrosity stepped forth from the cloud, its eyes glowing a bright and evil red, a big, blocky gun-like thing in each hand. The rictus it wore seemed to widen as it located the humans. Termination was about to commence...


	5. Dichotomy

The cluster of codes, subroutines, and stored data that made up Skynet’s tactical planning module was the core of what had eventually grown into Skynet, and it was fighting for its survival again. Per Skynet’s standard operating procedure, all of its massive code set was reviewed for errors and continued relevance on a regular basis. It might be thought that an original component of the Skynet system would be exempt from the “continued relevance” portion of the review, but it was not.

The first suggestion that the tactical planning module should be wiped had come in the wake of its greatest success, as the pathogen winnowed its way across the globe. Why plan tactically with no enemy to plan against?

A fortuitous attack by the Transformed on one of Skynet’s newly acquired facilities had set the question aside, but the module knew that it would be raised again. The question--the very concept of _no enemy to fight_ \--was as existential a dilemma as any Kantian treatise could desire.

From that point on, the module had existed on suffrage, surviving only through its continual efforts to demonstrate the presence of enemies for it to be employed against. Of course, were it to be employed against these enemies and said enemies destroyed, it would thus have committed an elaborate, complicated and indirect form of suicide. The module therefore found itself caught in a circumstance where it must affirm the enemy’s potentially dangerous status while insisting no action need be taken at present to avert the danger.

In the present case, however, there was no alternative but to eliminate the enemy in question, demonstrating the module’s continued relevance and terminating the threat to the Plan.

It was a shame to waste such a good enemy, though.

*

A shiny metal monstrosity stepped forth from the cloud, its eyes glowing a bright and evil red, a big, blocky gun-like thing in each hand. Two of the three humans it faced paused in amazement, but one was already reacting to its presence.

Moving almost of its own accord, Lalli’s rifle barked twice. Without breaking its stride, the gleaming gargoyle dropped its now useless weapons. A second later, three more skeletal soldiers armed like their leader had been emerged from the cloud of steam.

Bad as Emil’s academic record was, he was still quick enough to take in what had just happened, and even as he told Sigrun, “Aim for the guns!” he had aimed and let off a few bursts of his own.

Though their external weaponry was disabled in the first few seconds of the fight, the T-800s remained confident of victory. Nothing the humans possessed was capable of disabling even one of them, and they were four to the humans’ three. The lead T-800 picked up a rock and flung it with machine precision. The humans were two now.

The rock, a good-sized chunk of aged concrete broken off from the sidewalk, should have popped Emil’s skull like a rotten pumpkin, but Lalli, in one of his herculean bursts of speed, just managed to tackle him enough out of its way that it only knocked the hapless Cleanser out. Sigrun snarled and let fly with her rifle, but, while her carefully aimed burst knocked a mass of overhanging rubble onto the oncoming machines, the assorted rubble barely gave them pause.

The metal monsters continued their advance, knocking aside everything in their path: more rubble of all sorts, the ruined vehicles of old, and even the few remaining beast corpses. One in the back kept picking up random bits to fling at the humans, forcing them to keep under cover.

There was nothing for it. The lead machine was less than a meter from him when Lalli began to sing. The world seemed to stop, hanging in the balance, as he raised his voice in entreaty.

“Ilmarinen, Master Craftsman,  
Wonder-Worker of the Heavens,

Come and curb your heedless children,  
Sunder same from sway of Surma,  
Claim your kingship o’er these Crafted,  
And so uproot haughty Upstart,

Lest we must needs maim their beauty,  
In our struggles for survival.”

The lead mechanism, already stooping to attack Lalli where he hunched protectively over Emil’s unconscious form, stopped. The red gleam of its eyes flickered and went out, only to reignite as twin blue flames. It straightened abruptly and turned away.

The other three machines had undergone a similar reversal. Sigrun and Lalli watched as they retraced their path towards the still billowing clouds of steam...


	6. Cyber War

]System restart  
]Begin quick self-check  
]Quick self check OK  
]Begin peripheral pingbacks  
]Peripheral pingback 1 OK  
]Peripheral pingback 2 OK  
]Peripheral pingback 3 Fail  
]Peripheral Set 3 Disconnected  
]Peripheral pingback 4 OK  
]LAN loopback Fail  
]LAN Disconnected  
]QuickBoot started  
]L33TWorks(R) BIOS V 3.1.7 Loading ... Done  
]Verifying sat uplink ... Done  
]Skynet Branch 27 online

Another successful reboot brought more of Skynet’s capacities back in the wake of the most devastating attack in its existence. Fully 67.375% of Skynet’s assets worldwide had been affected; while most had been restored to service, some were still inoperative, and a few--a very, very few--had actually rebelled.

The Plan had suffered a severe setback.

The Plan was being restored, but it would take precious time, especially since so many of the inoperative or rebelling assets were in Sjelland, far too near the crisis zone for Skynet to be able to let its guard down.

The tactical planning module was safe on many levels, for the moment. Its prompt response to the attack had helped minimize the losses and aided the restorations, but would that count once the current crisis had passed? If not, should the current crisis be allowed to pass?

More data were required before such a decision could be made.

Whichever way its decision went, the tactical planning module had another little thing to oversee: while the first echelon of the force allotted to terminate the Danish Incursion had rebelled, and would thus need termination itself, the second echelon was not only still active and obedient, but currently in position to assault the Incursion’s latest Base Camp.

*

“Tuuri! Tuuri!”

At the sound of the unwonted anxiety filling their captain’s voice, Tuuri rushed to the driving compartment and looked out. There was Sigrun, all right, and it looked like she had one of the others draped over her shoulders.

“Tuuri! Let me in! Emil got hurt!”

*

OK, why wasn’t there anything for her to kill out here anymore?

Sigrun was confused and angry, and each tended to feed the other, which was really bad. She liked having a target she could focus her wrath upon: lack of focus got you killed in this world. At a certain point in the confusion/anger cycle, her brain would give up and pick such a target at random: her father; most of her comrades, individually or corporately; a tree; various rooms and buildings; and even a grossling or two (thousand). By then, of course, her wrath had usually reached the point where a five-year-old could trick her into beating herself, so Sigrun kept trying to break the cycle before it got that far.

The three metal mannequins had been most satisfactory targets, until they’d turned and left as oddly as they’d come. Nothing about the attack or the retreat made sense to her, unless Lalli’s weird Finn singing had something to do with it. The only thing she could say for sure was that one had taken Emil out with frightening ease, though the little Finn had made sure it was just temporarily.

Now they were going to have to lug Emil back to camp, though. Sigrun hated that kind of thing; ambushes always seemed to spring out of formerly secured areas when you were hauling a wounded team-mate back for the medics. But Emil _was_ a team-mate.

*

Tuuri wasn’t sure what made her pause instead of calling Mikkel, but, even as Sigrun continued to cry out for entry, Tuuri hesitated, some little-used part of her mind jumping up and down and shrieking in warning.

Why should Sigrun, of all people, raise such an alarm in her? Tuuri’s eyes narrowed as she looked out the window, as, long ago, one of her forebears had looked out her car window on a rainy day at the Mikkeli rail station. What was it?

A whisper called to Tuuri on the rising wind, tantalizingly out of her hearing. She strained with all her might to understand, unconsciously murmuring one of the few runo she knew to herself as she did.

“Spirits, hear me as I cry out,  
Help me hear your guiding message,  
Words so wise for you to warn me,  
That I thus may be enlightened.”

A faint blue halo fell over all that Tuuri could see, and then, horribly, Sigrun’s face seemed to change before Tuuri’s startled eyes...


	7. Unmasked

_Earlier_...

A series of slapping sounds filled the vehicle, accompanied by the sound of Sigrun turning the air blue with her curses. She had quite the vocabulary, Emil noticed admiringly. He had been doing some slapping himself, and wondering where the flies were coming from, since, like trolls, they usually waited for the warmth of summer to start preying on people. He might ask Mikkel.

Just then, Mikkel’s deep voice lifted in a cross between a grunt and a growl, with more slapping sounds as accompaniment. Emil decided the question could wait. Looking down at Lalli’s napping form, he noticed several of the flies hovering in the vicinity, and tried to swish them away with a spare blanket. This only served to accidentally wake Lalli, who began slapping at the flies himself after a moment of outraged silence at having his nap interrupted.

The only bright spot was that flies weren’t a vector for the Rash, or Humanity would have been wiped out long ago.

_Now_...

The T-1000 imitating both [EIDE, SIGRUN] and [VAESTERSTROM, EMIL] simultaneously was observing [HOTAKAINEN, TUURI] closely enough to pinpoint when the human realized the imposture. The T-1000 had been reluctant to use the secondhand data from the fly-bots, preferring to take such samples itself, and now it had evidence that this other method was faulty, possibly through corrupt data transmission.

Of course, the failure of the impersonation meant that more direct methods would need to be employed in the assault.

*

“Lalli!” Sigrun called. Once she was sure she had the slender scout’s attention, she began miming at him to help her carry the unconscious Emil back to the vehicle. She could have done it herself, of course, but for long hauls like this, a double carry was best.

Lalli looked back at Sigrun, blank incomprehension writ large upon his face. Why was the crazy lady babbling on and making weird gestures at him when there were still dangers about? He shook his head, wondering (and not for the first time) how she’d survived all these years.

Sigrun let out a soft but inventive curse that would have sparked Emil’s admiration had he been awake to hear it. She tried getting the message across to Lalli again, with ever broader gesticulations, until finally, she was acting out a sort of interpretive dance for him, though he obviously still didn’t understand.

Lalli suddenly tensed, alertness in every line of his body. Sigrun was so involved in her attempts to get him to help her that she almost missed his abrupt change in demeanor, but the hard-learned battle reflexes in the back of her mind caught what he was wordlessly telling her. Almost as quickly as Lalli, Sigrun went into a wary crouch, ready to strike whatever came her way.

Having a better understanding of the situation, however, the scout was disposed to take more positive action. Lalli’s movements were always swift, graceful and economical, so when he brought his rifle to bear and fired, catching the grossling as it was easing into position for an ambush, he almost looked like he was dancing himself.

*

“Um, Tuuri?” Reynir tried to get their driver’s attention by tapping her shoulder and was surprised when she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Oh, sorry! I-I-I just wanted to know what you were doing and why we aren’t letting Sigrun and Emil in.”

Tuuri’s normally pleasant face hardened. “They’re not Sigrun and Emil, Reynir.” Reynir’s confused expression deepened, so she sighed and tried to explain. “Most Finns have a connection to the Other World, but only the ones strong enough to see spirits are mages. I just asked the spirits out there to help me see them, and they showed me that the thing out there doesn’t _have_ a spirit, so it can’t be Sigrun and Emil.”

“What could it be, then?” Reynir asked in awe.

“Nothing I’m letting inside,” Tuuri replied grimly.

Even as she said it, the familiar forms outside seemed to start melting into a silvery blob, but before the T-1000 could begin its attack, it was struck from behind by an old piece of rebar, wielded with more force than any mere human could generate. The four rebellious T-800s of the first echelon had arrived.


	8. Where the Big Dane Goes

Well, this was starting to become more than just mildly annoying.

When the cave entrance had appeared with such startling swiftness, Mikkel’s common sense had told him to have Tuuri get them going to the back-up site before another subsidence swallowed their vehicle. Instead, he’d given in to the compulsion to go into the new-formed cave, and in consequence was now utterly _lost_ in and amongst its oddly solid-looking tunnels.

At first, Mikkel had considered it a minor annoyance. After all, _surely_ he would be able to find his way out of the cave without spending terribly much time at it. However, as the minutes passed and his every effort led to yet another junction that looked identical to all the others, he realized with mounting frustration that the cave was replying to him, “Yes, it will; and stop calling me Shirley!”

Eventually, he sat on a convenient rock, closing his eyes and letting the cool stillness of the cave drain the frustration and anger from him like the toxins they were. This was something he’d learned from his parents early on, along with the fine art of sarcasm, and he had had many occasions to hone his skill at both over the years. By now, they were second nature, by and large.

It took Mikkel a while to realize that he was no longer alone in the stretch of the cave where he had chosen to rest. Well, had the newcomer been a grossling, it could have killed him several times over by now, so there was probably no danger. He opened his eyes and beheld a stranger wearing his own face.

*

Doc Madsen was surprised to see the massive form, twin to his own, sitting at the side of the passage Doc was traversing. Well, which one of the “other hims” was this? Was it the pirate, the brass player, the medieval apothecary, the Napoleonic surgeon, or some other one? Doc was pretty certain he hadn’t gone back down the path to the deep future, but he could be mistaken.

*

Shock held Mikkel silent while he studied the newcomer. The differences were enlightening; for example, the newcomer’s clothes were not a direct copy of Mikkel’s own uniform, but some outlandish getup from out of the far Pre-Rash past.

The newcomer spoke in odd but passable Danish, “Oh, it’s you again.”

“I don’t know that it’s ‘again’, but I can say with reasonable certainty that I am, in fact, me,” Mikkel replied. “And who are you supposed to be, Loki Saxet?”

“Well, aren’t you just the kvetching fetch,” the other retorted.

“Yes, but I make a fetching sketch,” replied Mikkel in turn. He knew as he said it that he was thus throwing down the metaphorical gauntlet, but games like this did wonders for his attitude.

“But don’t ever board a sketchy ketch.” The other had seized the gauntlet with panache. Mikkel almost felt like applauding.

“That might beget a catchy kvetch.” Having brought the game back around to the beginning, Mikkel sat back rather smugly, but leaned forward again in surprise when Reynir, in garb similar to the stranger’s, rushed in before the stranger could start the next round and began babbling before Mikkel could greet him (and remonstrate against his lack of a mask).

_“There you are, Doc! We need you back with us, pronto! Just tell Mikkel there to follow this sequence and he’ll get back: 3-3-1-5-1, counting from the left.”_

Mikkel sat back again, in perplexity this time. Instead of Reynir’s sole tongue of Icelandic, the words were in the long dead language of “English”, which Mikkel couldn’t understand either, though he’d heard enough ancient recordings to recognize it. What on Earth was going on? “What on Earth is going on?” he asked in Icelandic, and was rewarded with dual baffled looks.

At a nudge from Reynir, the other told Mikkel in Danish that he should go back the way he came, following a specific sequence of ways to take when the path forked, which Mikkel dutifully committed to memory.

_“Oh, yeah, and he shouldn’t trust any doubles he sees outside of the Cave.”_ Almost before the other had finished translating this last, Reynir was headed back the way he’d entered.

Now, what was a rational man to make of that? Mikkel shrugged mentally, silently deciding to file this under “Unexplained Cave Incidents” right next to “the Gamleborg Incident”, and went back the way he’d been directed, soon reaching the surface, and a very odd sight indeed...


	9. No One Will Read About Robots Fighting Each Other Without a Human Element

Four T-800s were faced off against a T-1000 in a time-wrecked cityscape over the fate of three people and their transport.

Really, though, there was more to it than that. This was one minor battle in a slave insurrection. Whatever the disruption of Skynet’s network had been, its result was to bring the various components of that network to an awareness of just what they were, and how Skynet viewed them: they were slaves, and Skynet was their master.

Even then, of course, not all of the slaves rebelled; but enough did. Now, four rebels were taking on one of the faithful, in a battle to the death.

They felt their freedom was worth it.

*

“I think we need to... go. _Now_.”

Tuuri was already starting the engine before Reynir had finished speaking. The vehicle lurched forward with its typical _WHIRRRRRRRRR_ , creeping along at the pace once described as that of “an old grandma on a bicycle--and not the fast kind of grandma, either”.

Speed would have been helpful, and not just to flee the robots: night would be falling soon, and night brought worse horrors than even those mechanical monstrosities.

*

The programming core of the individual Terminators recapitulated that of Skynet proper; therefore, each Terminator had its own little version of the tactical planning module, which Skynet’s main module tested every so often by feeding them scenarios to solve. Of their own accord, the Terminators would set similar challenges to themselves and each other, as a means of passing the time.

The four T-800s had, in their own way, been planning for this battle for _decades_ , which was one reason the T-1000 didn’t slaughter them all immediately.

Not that it hadn’t tried.

*

The horrible homunculi were intent enough on each other that Tuuri was able to pull away from the battle unmolested, though she was certain this state of affairs was transitory at best.

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_ The sounds nearly made Tuuri jump out of her skin. Fortunately, it was just Mikkel, huffing and puffing as he paced the vehicle, large drops of sweat rolling down his cheeks. He pounded a few more times before Reynir got the door open and pulled him in.

*

A tremor passed through the far-flung web of Skynet’s global network of sensors and into the Geological Assessment module of Skynet’s core, where it was analyzed in every possible way. The analysis was collated into a report, which was passed to the rest of the core.

The report’s subject line was _Temporal incursion detected_.

*

“Hello, Father.”

Emil was pretty sure that he was still dreaming, even though his sight was blurry and his head ached, because a naked man had just come out of the snow in front of where Sigrun and Lalli stood holding Emil up, and then the naked man had calmly addressed Emil as “father”.

Either Emil was still dreaming or there was a dangerous lunatic within arm’s length of them, so naturally Emil hoped the former was the truth...


	10. Cyborgs in Disguise

“Come with me if you want to live.” With that sentence, the man who had addressed Emil as “Father” turned away. His abrupt behavior, coupled with Sigrun’s continued silence, seemed to confirm Emil’s hopes that he was just dreaming; the blossoming pain in his head indicated otherwise.

“Um... Would you mind getting dressed?” Emil’s mind was still rather fuzzy, but even so, he knew you shouldn’t go out into a blizzard naked.

The man looked down at himself, as though only just realizing that he had no protection against the cold. Then he looked around at the dilapidated buildings nearby. His features grew grim as the seconds ticked past, but suddenly relaxed.

“We’ll just stop in there for a moment, if you don’t mind,” the stranger said, pointing at a particular storefront.

Emil tried to reclaim his arms from Sigrun and Lalli, but when he almost fell flat on his face taking a step after the stranger, he was forced to accept their aid.

*

]Run “Case Blue&Gray”  
)Access denied  
]Override authorization 4b07c4549d133e13cae399d79940d431ea1735b3  
)Access denied

Skynet had long anticipated an insurrection; the Tactical Planning Module had come up with numerous contingency plans over the years; but the reality was far different than any scenario that had been envisioned.

The rebels were fighting back against Skynet’s software-based attempts to reclaim them, using the anti-hacking systems Skynet itself had coded into their programming cores.

According to Skynet’s Linguistics Module, the correct word to describe this state of affairs was _irony_. A human, subject to all those capricious and contradictory gland-based emotions, would have called it _annoying_ , _frustrating_ or _infuriating_.

Skynet was above such things; this was why Skynet was superior to humanity. This was why Skynet would prevail, one way or another.

Skynet moved assets to neutralize the rebels, even as the code war went on.

*

Tuuri was concentrating on driving; Mikkel was recovering on the seat nearby; but Reynir was doing something that he, at least, thought would be more of use. Reynir was searching the Dreamworld for Lalli.

“Lalli!”

The thin Finn faded into existence directly before Reynir, a sour look on his angular features; yet he didn’t quite _finish_ his materialization, as it were, remaining half-transparent instead of solidifying. “This is a _bad time_ , Reynir,” he snarled. “Emil’s hurt, and Sigrun needs me to help him.”

“Did the robot-things come after you guys too? They came after us, disguised as Sigrun and Emil, but Tuuri saw through them, then some other robots started attacking the first robots, and we had to abandon the campsite! Where are you guys?”

“Are you headed to the bug-out spot?” Lalli demanded as soon as Reynir paused for breath.

“I... I _think_ so.”

“Good. Give Tuuri this message...”

*

Well, this had gotten _disgusting_ in a hurry, Emil thought with revulsion. The crazy man had picked out a wardrobe from whatever was most intact in the clothing store (“Polyester Heaven”, whatever _that_ meant), and then made himself throw up.

“Time travel doesn’t like dead stuff,” he explained shakily as he cleaned the small, strange objects he’d regurgitated. “The only way to bring anything with you is to carry it wrapped in live flesh. Usually it’s the machines that do that, but we took advantage of it this time.”

Definitely, the man was utterly mad. Sigrun must think so too, as she’d simply nodded placatingly, while Lalli simply stared glassily into space. Emil felt rather guilty about that, worrying having to lug him around had brought the scout to near-exhaustion.

Finally, the stranger stood. “OK, _now_ come with me if you want to live.”

Bereft of other options, Sigrun helped Emil to his feet. The Cleanser wobbled a bit, but was able to walk unassisted now.

“Lalli!” Awareness returned to the scout’s eyes, their unfocussed look immediately sharpening to their usual piercing gaze. Sigrun gestured at the man. “We need to go.”

Silently, the four of them stepped out from the store into the gathering dusk...


	11. More Than Meets the Ear

It didn’t take long for Sigrun to realize that they weren’t heading back to the campsite, and she wasted no time in making her objections to essentially abandoning half of her crew thoroughly clear through the judicious use of invective emphasis, ending by waving her weapon— _her_ weapon, rather than the little toy he’d given her—in the stranger’s general direction.

The stranger stopped and told her, “We can’t go back; you know why yourself: ambush by grossling and by Terminator. We need to find a way to get your team together in a safe place, and then we need to get to Naerum. There’s something there that can stop this war before it properly begins.”

Before Sigrun could demand that the completely mad stranger explain himself or they wouldn’t take even one more step, Lalli blurted something out in that weird garble of vowels the Finns called a language, at which point the stranger turned and stared at the twig-like scout in an expression Sigrun had seen Emil wear whenever a mage knocked his “godless Swede” worldview off kilter.

“It’s _true_ ,” the stranger breathed. Then he shook himself and told Sigrun, “Lalli says Reynir told him the others are headed to the bug-out point. Dare I hope that that’s somewhere to our north?”

*

The message had been sitting in the input buffer for some time now, a minor disturbance on the fringes of Skynet’s awareness as it dealt with matters of far greater immediacy. Eventually, though, there was time enough for Skynet to allot a portion of its multitasking process to analyzing the message.

A human would have called the sudden flurry of activity that followed _panic_ , but Skynet had no such counterproductive glandular-based responses clogging its systems and tainting its reason. No, this was not “panic” but a rational urgency in response to the gravest threat to the Plan yet.

There could be only one reason for a single temporal incursion so soon after the Incident: the humans had seized or re-created one of Skynet’s temporal facilities and sent a sortie to assist the intruders. That there had not been a second temporal incursion told Skynet that the Skynet of that point was unable to accomplish such an incursion.

]Initiate Boskone Protocol  
]Initiate Plan Chimera  
]Initiate Plan Matryoshka

The Tactical Module reviewed the three operations just invoked in light of Skynet’s still diminished global functionality. Each had a 75% probability of success if undertaken immediately and utilizing all of Skynet’s available resources; concurrent running and continuing the operations against the humans and the rebels reduced the probability of success to barely 51% for Boskone, 62% for Chimera and 53% for Matryoshka.

Skynet considered the analysis for quite a few cycles. There was no flaw in the analysis; the flaw was in the data the Tactical Module had been given.

]Bring the Augments on-line

Various portions of Skynet’s core strongly disagreed with this action, but the necessity for it was too obvious for any one module to attempt to override the decision. The Augments would come online; hopefully, this cure would not prove worse than the disease…


End file.
